Ever since Monday, it's felt like Friday night; thank God it's finally here. I don't know what it is that's made me feel this way this week. Probably the Holiday Season -- that weird American phenomenon that warps minds and curves space like some Einsteinian algorithm come unglued, some rough-trade Beast, its hour come at last, slouching toward Anaheim to be borne. Or at least passively tolerated.

Steven Pinker knows nothing about it. Trust me. This is how the mind works. An irrational feeling, a random trope, a metaphor groping to explain -- and somehow synchronicity connecting the flow where no flow flew before. I was looking for three syllables to stand in for Bethlehem in the Yeats poem, The Second Coming, the ending of which I butchered above. I ask Robin, "Are there a lot of malls in Anaheim?" It fits the scansion. "Not so many," she says, "but there's Disneyland." So you see, I was in no way planning this. Then it's off to Google images to find visual representation of the Magic Kingdom in which we metonymically all live. Something more than the literal, something connotative, extending further into the imagination, like Brando slipping ever deeper into the apocalyptic jungle. I find first a site, then a book: The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing the Disney Theme Parks.

There are these terms in psychiatry: depersonalization, derealization. I turn to Google again. I find this page on which are listed other terms associated with these vague anxieties. One is: "in a Disney-world dream state." Again, none of this was planned. So what? Is the world just shaped this way? Are there connections inherent in the matrix of what we call reality, subterranean tunnels between and among ideas that seem on the surface to exist independently? If they exist at all.

I tell myself to be careful here. This is how all that esoteric New Age crap got started in the first place. Secret Hermetic symmetries, hidden meanings in natural symbols, wormtrace under treebark, imaginary constellations in the stars. Be careful. Could be The Beautiful Mind Garage again, I tell myself. That scene in the movie where Nash's wife discovers he's been mad as a hatter all along. Wow. I've adopted that flash as my own personal reminder of how far out it can get. As if I needed a reminder. And is this art? Or is it... something else?

After seeing that movie, I found a bit by Nash himself on the Nobel Prize site. Consider the following clip:

So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos. For example, a non-Zoroastrian could think of Zarathustra as simply a madman who led millions of naive followers to adopt a cult of ritual fire worship. But without his "madness" Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten.

Statistically, it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist, at the age of 66, would be able through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her previous achievements. However I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical. Thus I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future. [emphasis mine]

When I went off in search of that just now, I was thinking about the first graf -- Nash's clear nostalgia for his former madness. I guess when I first found this page a year or two back (in the middle of my own), I hadn't noticed the bit about the 25-year vacation. Hey, works for me!

You think I'm kidding about this? I got email a minute ago that begins, "Hi Loretta." I'm telling you: derealization. It's endemic. And no cure in sight. But that's the wrong way to look at these things. By "wrong," of course, I don't mean to pretend I have some inside knowledge of what's "right." Look, we need to get past all this binary logic, OK? The internet is rotting our brains. Or, to be more precise, it's not the net; it's the zero-one zero-sum either-or Cartesian dichotomy that was burned into the 20th century mind by Computer Science. If all this seems a tad abstract, what I mean can be illuminated by a simple question, which I've been doing my best to demonstrate here: Who says blogging has to be about  something?

Still, it requires research  to tie together all the tiny bits that constitute our shared understanding...


...or confusion. Proof is impossible since the dawn of the postmodern Aha! (More like an ohmygodnonotthat!) But corroboration is sometimes comforting. Granted, the following clip is a bit um dense. Nonetheless, try to stick it out...

At the beginning of the 1990s, [Museum of Modern Art] curator Peter Galassi took over Szarkowski's reins in the photography department and attempted to reiterate MoMA's role as arbiter of photographic aesthetics. His first exhibition, "The Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort" in 1991, retooled the notion of "New Documents" for a younger generation. In his catalog essay, Galassi argues that in its golden age photography had conquered the world and the street, and that in the era of postmodern uncertainty, photographers were turning to the final frontier, the home. [emphasis mine]

from: Dial "P" for Panties: Narrative Photography in the 1990s
by Lucy Soutter
source: Afterimage, 1 January 2000
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2000 Visual Studies Workshop

See what I mean? It's not till you get to the end and see that article title that it all makes sense. Sort of. I think. Yes, home: the final frontier -- (WTF?) -- where Disney rules and Hoyle goes begging. Where a man hangs his hat. Where the heart is.

[Hugely important author's note: the Musical Accompaniment portion of today's pogrom requires one of the two zillion versions of the RealAudio player, one of which is free, but whichever one that is probably doesn't work with your hardware and/or operating system. All that aside, I'd like to extend thanks and a big tip o' the hat to the whole cast and crew!]

I don't know what's come over me this Holiday Season. Reading back over the last several posts, you might think I was some kind of downhead. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Usually, I'm very upbeat. Setbacks never slow me down. No storm cloud ever lacks a silver lining. I am all about maintaining high morale. Oh yeah.

But these last few days, I don't know. So I turned to my trusty HighBeam search box and plugged in "optimism" to see if I could find some apparently much needed inspiration. As usual, I wasn't disappointed...

Spread optimism around the organization. This anonymous axiom is worth a listen: "A healthy attitude is contagious, but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier."

Now, that's the spirit! However, I was a little thrown by the following statement a couple of paragraphs later...

..."disciplined optimism" means having a substantial and continuing investment in payroll's mission and staff...

Oh! I get it. It's a review of a book called The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell in a publication called Payroll Manager's Report, and the writer is explaining: "How to model and teach optimism to your payroll staff." Whew! I thought I was losing it there for a second.

OK, so I admit it. This is me trying to be optimistic. Fighting upstream against the current all the way. I guess it just feels more natural, in my case, to see the glass as half full -- of Strontium 90. Sounds even to me like I need another hit...

Martin Seligman, University of Pennsylvania psychologist and author of Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, observes that with practice pessimists can become optimists and be better off for the change. Benefits include increased motivation, superior achievement, a more pleasant atmosphere, and better physical health. But, he adds that you should not be an optimist all the time: "When the risks are high, for example, pessimists may be more grounded in reality and less likely to get hurt." [emphasis mine]

Just two comments here. First off, based on my own balanced assessment over many years of reflection, Martin Seligman is a hopeless imbecile (my desktop version of the Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus explains that "imbecility is retardation more severe than a moron but not as severe as an idiot").

Second off: hold the phone. Doesn't this sound just like that thing I quoted last week that said depressives were often more realistic than those who saw themselves as basically invincible? So let me see if I've got this straight. If the risk is low -- like say someone might give me a dirty look if I say "Have a nice day" -- then I should be optimistic and not sweat the small stuff. (And it's all small stuff, as we've been reminded ad nauseam.) However, if the risk is high -- for instance, someone might seriously hurt me if I say that -- then I should think twice and maybe not say anything at all. Or run. Or take another case. I should think "Oh, tomorrow it will be a nice sunny day," because if it isn't, well, who really gives a damn? But if there might be a nuclear war and we all get incinerated and life as we know if might end because of some incredibly dumb thing some country's President might do, then I should think twice about going outside. Is that how this optimism thing works? God, that is so incredibly brain damaged! I mean, what? Anytime it really counts, it doesn't really count? Then what's the point? I don't get it. Then again, people have been telling me that for a long time, so just forget I said anything, OK? Play the musical accompaniment theme again and maybe everything will turn out all right.

Who can say?

above quotes taken from: Using optimism as a leadership tool
source: Payroll Manager's Report, 1 April 2004
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2004 Institute of Management & Administration

What would the Holiday Season be without Old Blue Eyes? This year, it appears the Holiday Season began back around April, because since then I've been hearing a lot of that mellow old crooner in places like Barnes & Noble, Borders, McDonald's, Bob's Big Boy, and the County slammer. Yes folks, it sure looks like yet another lounge lizard revival is underway and in full swing.

Personally, I could get lost in those big blue bedroom eyes, so full of lascivious Las Vegas moneylust and RICO larceny. Oh, Frankie!

"Frank was always such a good boy," said his aged mother (now 145) in an exclusive interview with Chief Blogging Officer. "He never stole or cheated or treated the girls bad, like the rest of that Rat Pack scum he hung around with. And those Mafiosi!" she wailed. "He was never like that until he started going down to Havana with Mickey Cohen and Sam Giancana and Jack Kenn...," but here she burst into tears. Colin Wilson is less sanguine in Scandal! Private Stories of Public Shame, reviewed by Paul Newman (no, not that one) on the Abraxas & Colin Wilson Newsletter site...

"Frank Sinatra is another Spoilt Brat. Behind that superb singing voice, redolent with smoky evenings in nightclubs and bittersweet affairs, we find a petulant, hate-dealing tyrant who clothed his rancour in a suit of charm and vaulted obstacles like a pedigree. He was the kind of man to whom you dare not tell a small truth lest the next day you choke on it. His jolly aerial hit 'Come Fly With Me' must have had a special significance to that good and faithful servant who -- for some miniscule lapse -- was almost flung out of the door of his private aeroplane."

In Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra, author George Jacobs...

...depicts the fabled sex-mad crooner as a racist, sexist, fame-crazy monster. And he should know, having worked as Sinatra's valet, confidant, pimp and general dogsbody from 1953 to 1968.

Paid to pander to Sinatra's every whim, to help him juggle multiple mistresses, cosy up to the Kennedys and placate Mafia thugs, Jacobs acquired a unique warts-and-all insight into the insane world of mega-stardom.... Jacobs informs us that Sinatra, prodigiously endowed, required a woman (or three) every night.... Jumping to attention every time Sinatra shouted 'Get me a goddam hooker', Jacobs's duties involved collecting the girls, organising the candlelit seduction dinners, paying them and returning them home afterwards. Sinatra liked to sleep alone after the fireworks were over.

from: If that's Sinatra's Way, he's welcome to it by Val Hennessy
source: The Daily Mail (London), 18 July 2003
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2003 Solo Syndication Limited

Have Yourself a Merry Christmas	Listen	Listen

It takes longer than you might think to build these things. And build is the operative word. On this particular blog, anyway, the entries aren't just entirely off the top of my head. Sure, there's the usual recombinant free-associating streams of consciousness going off in all directions at once, the trademarked Illusion of Confusion™ whereby I convince you that I've totally lost track of what I'm talking about, but then I come back at the end and tie up all the loose threads and blow your mind out the other side of your head. But because this technique, if applied too often, becomes predictable, and you'd guess too easily that that's what I'm up to, I sometime have to vary my approach, seeming to go off in all directions at once -- but in these cases never coming back.

This is intentional.

And this could well be one of those times, so pay close attention. Note that I have nothing up my sleeves. My fingers never leave my hands.

But to backtrack a bit, the point of mentioning blog-item build-time is that between the sentences and editing commands -- between the buttons, you could say -- are many many checks of how the HTML and images are laying out. Will the screed fit the page? Is the grafik too wide for the column? Etc. A million little things to consider. So before you ever see the final product, be assured that I've seen it about 600 times.

Thus it was, in building the item below, that I become indelibly imprinted on the image of Doreen Virtue. I now see her in my sleep, in waking fantasies, in supermarket aisles and the checkout counter at the adult video store. That image has burned itself into my brain. And the more I looked at it, the more I thought how much she'd look at home at a conservative party fund raiser. Page down, look again. Am I right, dude? I mean, am I right? Here, she looks a bit more like a solid citizen family-values soccer mom, but that fits too. The point is that while much of the spookiness surrounding new age trips is left-leaning into darker and more questionable areas such drug-assisted shamanism, sorcery, and full-out satanic moon-barkery, angelism is basically your squeaky clean whiter-than-white... wait for it... yes that's right: Wicca for Republicans.

Of course, this is only a working hypothesis. At this point. More research is needed into the demographics of Connecticut socialites entertaining angelic choirs at high tea on the veranda. It's an established fact that Salem today is solidly in the sticky wiccan court. But that Massachusetts. They vote for weirdos there anyway. And I have to say Boulder is evenly split. Half the whackjobs here go for the dark path -- Tibetan sex magick, South American "vision herbals," that sort of thing. The other half is retrofitting traditional mainstream Judeo-Christian beliefs to accommodate both angel communications and the DSM-IV, in which the criteria for diagnosing Schizophrenia must contain two of five so-called Criteria A symptoms. However, these five are followed by a note that states: "Only one Criteria A symptom is required if delusions are bizarre or hallucinations consist of a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person's behavior or thoughts, or two or more voices conversing with each other." [emphasis mine]

But don't take my word for it. Here's Doreen Virtue from her book Archangels & Ascended Masters: A Guide to Working and Healing With Divinities and Deities:

"Krishna loves to connect with people through the offering of, and blessing of food. Prior to eating something, look at the food and mentally call upon Krishna. Tell him that the food is your offering to him. As he accepts your gift, he will bless and purify the food with his highly spirtualized energy. Thank him, and then completely ingest his blessings by eating the food slowly, enjoying each bite completely. Have a mental conversation with him while you're eating this food. You'll notice that the experience is like being with a very wise dining companion who offers you stellar wisdom and sage advice." [p. 104 - emphasis mine]

For a slightly different take, you might try this book:

But let's let Doreen have the last word, shall we?

To get help from these heavenly guardians, Virtue suggests these steps: Trust that your angels are all around you, even if you cannot hear or see them. Make specific requests, since angels will only interfere uninvited in life-threatening situations. Don't be afraid that you are unworthy or your request too menial, since angels are willing to help (find a soulmate, spark sex, get a taxi, secure a manicurist appointment) without judgment.

from: FITNESS FILE / SEX / Q & A by Dr. Judy Kuriansky, clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist
source: Newsday, 16 July 2000
via: HighBeam Research

In this case, The Boston Herald, from four years ago. Angels sing, in this case, from more books than you can count without taking your shoes off by one Doreen Virtue -- yes, she says, that's her real name -- whom Robin and I were just sitting around fulminating about.

Despite their association with Christian tradition, "angels cross all religious divides," said Doreen Virtue, author of three books about angels, including Divine Guidance - How to Have a Dialogue with God and Your Guardian Angels. "They play a role in Eastern, Western, ancient and modern religious beliefs. Angels are a part of the Christmas story and they haven't disappeared," Virtue said. "They are still here and new angels are constantly being created."

from: Angelic beauty; Heavenly creatures add delight to the holidays
by Azell Murphy Cavaan
source: The Boston Herald, 25 December 2000
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2000 Boston Herald

On the cover of the book Doreen's PR angels were flogging back in 2000, famous author Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God) blurbs: "I have always emphasized that God communicates with all of us, and Doreen Virtue teaches clear and understandable steps that enable everyone to have conversations with God."

If memory serves, another book that came out the same year began: "Markets are conversations." This now-infamous dictum of blogpal-cum-coauthor Doc Searls serves as a good introduction to these yuletide ruminations on the angel market -- which in brief, is currently booming.

Amazon.com returns 119,701 hits for "angels," including a fairly new book (September 2004) you might not have heard about yet -- Angel Cats: Divine Messengers of Comfort -- as well as one you most probably have (i.e., heard about, or own; either reading works): Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. Let me say right here that Mr. Brown, better known for his megamonster hit The Da Vinci Code, is one of the worst writers I've ever had the misfortune to have read. And I mean the very worst: deficient, substandard, inferior, pessimal, picayune, piffling, bantam-weight, lilliputian. You would think that to write a book like this would be to meet one's Waterloo.

But no-o-o-o. You would be wrong in that surmise. Published March 18, 2003, The Da Vinci code is still today the #3 bestseller on Amazon. The book has generated intense debate among academic historians and ecclesiastical scholars worldwide, which of course has led to a lucrative movie deal.

Hollywood s'active aussi. Ayant arraché les droits de "Da Vinci Code" pour six millions de dollars, les studios Columbia Pictures (Sony) ont chargé Ron Howard ("Un homme d'exception") du tournage qui devrait débuter au printemps pour une sortie en mai 2006. Le très populaire Tom Hanks jouera le professeur de symbologie Robert Langdon, sorte d'Indiana Jones plongé au coeur d'un jeu de piste meurtrier, sur fond de sociétés secrètes et de symboles cachés dans les tableaux du Louvre.

from: "Da Vinci Code", le best-seller en or massif de 2004
source: Agence France Presse, 17 December 17 2004
via: HighBeam Research

OK, so I can't read French either, but I'm pretty sure I can figure out what "Le très populaire Tom Hanks" and "sorte d'Indiana Jones" mean without resorting to a dictionary. -- not to mention "six millions de dollars."

Despite the air of theological controversy that has enveloped the book, its overall effect seems to have been a massive resurgence of interest in -- and here we return to our theme -- angels. Never mind that it's not really about angels. It's about the sort of Medieval mindset in which angels have traditionally played a large role -- in places like, for instance, 12th Century France, the 14th Century Hapsburg Empire, and 21st Century Los Angeles.

But it's not all bad news out there. Christopher Moore (Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, etc) has released a new novel especially for this joyous season. The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror, which, according to no less a light than Janet Maslin, combines "an archangel, a miracle and brain- eating zombies rising from their graves."

Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.

Pine Cove, her pseudo-Tudor architecture all tarted up in holiday quaintage...

Well, you get the general idea. Moore -- with whom I first became acquainted via his 1997 Island of the Sequined Love Nun -- has been getting better at this sort of spiritual-historical novel since his bestselling Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, which also features the same Maslin-referenced archangel: Raziel. While all this may sound horribly sacrilegious, it's really not. However, as The Stupidest Angel includes a bloodthirsty character who is a member of Pagan Vegetarians for Peace, we may, I think, safely assume that Christopher Moore has about had it up to there with all this infernal angel literature. As -- in case you couldn't tell -- have I.

And to all a good night.